India's silent revolution . incramming; the fellow with the best memory won. Therewas no effort to teach students to think and reason, noattempt to recognize and encourage originality as dis-tinguished from parrot-like memorizing. There have been two main channels of education inIndia — the British Government and missions. Prac-tically all writers on India agree that missionaries havebeen an incalculably important influence in the educa-tional progress of the country. Professor Pratt, of Williams College, in his scholarly India and its Faiths, writes: One is uncertainwhether to admire most the
India's silent revolution . incramming; the fellow with the best memory won. Therewas no effort to teach students to think and reason, noattempt to recognize and encourage originality as dis-tinguished from parrot-like memorizing. There have been two main channels of education inIndia — the British Government and missions. Prac-tically all writers on India agree that missionaries havebeen an incalculably important influence in the educa-tional progress of the country. Professor Pratt, of Williams College, in his scholarly India and its Faiths, writes: One is uncertainwhether to admire most the missionary hospitals or themissionary schools and colleges, both of which have beenbrought to such a remarkable development. ^ William Archer writes: The influence of Christian-ity is traceable in all the intellectual movements of modernIndia, in every reform indeed which does not proceeddirectly from the Government, and in many which this merely means that Western enlightenment has 1 India and Its Faiths, p. EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY I49 come to the East in such close association with Chris-tianity that it is impossible to distinguish between the oneinfluence and the other. The history of missionary influence in the education ofIndia begins with William Carey and the English Bap-tists. The British Government was so opposed to mis-sionaries that Carey had to sHp into India in 1793 as anindigo planter. He carried on his mission work as a sideissue. Seven years later, when Lord Wellesley foundedhis college in Calcutta, Carey was the only man availableto teach Sanskrit and Bengali. British officials wereobliged to wink at the fact that after spending his morn-ing lecturing in the college he devoted his evenings topreaching on the street to the poor and outcaste. For some years, owing to opposition of the Govern-ment, further educational work by missionaries was lim-ited to individual efforts. It was not until 1813, whenthe charter of the East India Company was renewe
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